238 Butterfield : Romance of the Cuckoo. 
makes reference to a Cuckoo seen near the Vicarage at Charlton by the 
Rev. J. Meggison on February 4th, 1877, and again next day, and yet 
again in the second week in March ; and mention also is made of two 
young Cuckoos having been picked up by Mr. Calvert Chrisp in his garden 
at Hawkhiil in November, 1876, and took them into his house, but they 
soon died, and Mr. Bolam adds they were both old friends of his, and he 
was quite satisfied that neither of them could mistake a Cuckoo for 
any other bird. 
In The Naturalist for 1894, page 157, Jas. W. Addyman, Starbeck, 
Yorks., writes that he and Doctor Jackson heard the Cuckoo distinctly 
and unmistakably on the 27th March, 1894, in the woods bordering the 
Nidd at Killinghall Bridge, and neither of them entertained the slightest 
doubt on the point.* 
Quite a large number of instances could be given, if necessary, of 
Cuckoos having been seen in late autumn and even winter. A recent 
and absolutely reliable record is given in British Birds for March, page 
243, in which it is stated that Mr. J. F. Gee. writes to point out that he 
shot a young Cuckoo in Delamere, Cheshire, on December 26th, 1897 or 
1898, and Mr. Wetherby adds : Mr. Gee has kindly sent the bird for 
inspection. It is in juvenile plumage, with a few grey feathers on the 
head, and not further advanced in the moult than young birds often are 
in August or September. A record of a Cuckoo is given in The Birds of 
Yorkshire by my son, Rosse Butterfield, as having been killed on 5th 
November, 1902, at Horton, near Bradford. A few years ago, I think it 
was in 1917, I saw a Cuckoo in a valley near Baildon Moor, two or three 
times during the latter part of November and early December, when 
last I saw it it appeared to be eating the berries of the hawthorn. 
In Mr. Coward’s Birds of the British Isles he states that one of his 
friends shot a Cuckoo on December 26th. Writing in British Birds, 
Mr. Percy Harrison states that on December 1st, 1916, he saw a bird 
which he was able to identify with certainty as a young Cuckoo on the 
roof of Lydiard Millicent Rectory, near Swindon. The Editors remark 
that they believe this to be the latest date hitherto recorded for the 
Cuckoo in the British Isles, the latest previous record being November 
26th, 1900, when one was obtained at the Skulmartin Lightship, co. Down. 
Many more instances could be given of the unseasonable occurrences of 
Cuckoos in Britain, but those quoted prove that Cuckoos may survive 
any month of the year during average seasons. Judging from old writers 
about the Cuckoo, one would think it almost, if not altogether, lived on 
hairy caterpillars, when, in fact, its bill of fare is a miscellaneous one. 
Prof. Newton, in his Dictionary of Birds (page 119) says : ‘ Of no 
bird perhaps have more idle tales been told.’ Yet on page 121 he states : 
‘Cuckoos, too, have been not unfrequently shot as they were carrying a 
Cuckoo’s egg, presumably their own, in their bill, and this has probably 
given rise to the vulgar, but seemingly groundless, belief that they suck 
the eggs of other kinds of birds.’ In spite, however, of what Newton 
says, the facts in. support of the Cuckoo being guilty of sucking eggs of 
other birds are against his negative position on this question. The 
statement, on page 119, that ‘ whenever it (the Cuckoo) shews itself, it 
is a signal for all the small birds of the neighbourhood to be up in its 
pursuit, just as though it were a Hawk,’ scarcely accords with my own 
observations. In this neighbourhood, at any rate, the pursuit by birds 
of the Cuckoo is confined almost exclusively to the Meadow Pipit, and 
the behaviour of this pipit in the presence of the Cuckoo is quite different 
from its behaviour in the presence of, say, the Sparrow Hawk. Newton 
further adds : ‘ Towards the middle or end of June its “ plain song ” 
cry alters ; it becomes rather hoarser in tone, and its first syllable or 
* See The Naturalist for June, 1922, p. 206. 
. Naturalist 
